


Basket Case

by sumafamouxx



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Gets a Hug, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Comfort/Angst, Crying, Dialogue Light, Emotional Hurt, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feelings, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Gen, Gentle Kissing, Hugs, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt/Comfort, Men Crying, POV Third Person, kissing through hurt, kissing through tears, kissing while crying, lots of cellophane metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-09 12:51:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19888132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sumafamouxx/pseuds/sumafamouxx
Summary: bucky deserves a break, she's there to hold him together through the breaking process.prompted by the song Cellophane by Sia





	Basket Case

Lugging several heavy paper bags of grocery, she locked her car and began to make her way up the steps to her porch, when she stopped cold in her tracks. A silhouette sat on the steps, blocking the light from the overhead porchlight and casting a bulky and - if she didn’t know any better - very scary shadow on the ground below. If he noticed her presence in the darkness of the night, then he made no indication of it.

_Look at me, I’m such a basket case_

_Delivered to you wrapped in cellophane_

_Waiting on your doorstep everyday_

_Deliver, a basket filled with pain_

She took a moment to take in the mental state he could be in, judging by his seemingly defeated body language. His head was hanging so low it was almost below his shoulders, dark hair covering his beautiful azure eyes and probably bitten-red lips. His whole body looked like a live wire just about ready to explode - that’s how she knows he’s staying with her for the night.

Bucky always ends up at her doorstep on the worst nights. It would usually begin with him going out for a walk to distract his mind by people-watching, but would more often than not end with him in all his cracked glory, inches away from completely falling apart. Bucky always fought the exact same internal war within himself when he reached Y/N’s porch, blaming himself for bringing her his own pain and sorrow and becoming a burden on her otherwise very mundane and safe life.

_Patience is your virtue, saint o’mine_

_I’d have fallen through the cracks without your love tonight_

_I’m your groundhog and I’m skating on thin ice_

Y/N, on the other hand, invited him in. She coddled him and took care of him, fed him and gave him a lap to lay his head on and hands that run through his hair, every single time and without fail. Her patience with him was endless, Bucky was more than sure that he’d have lost his mind ages ago and would’ve had to be put back in cryo if it weren’t for her presence. He was always a hairline fracture away from breaking, but when he was with her he forgot about all the cracks inside him and could focus on her actions thoughts and feelings, instead of drowning in what’s inside of himself.

Tonight, she knew is worse than most nights, so she rushed to unlock the door to her house, managing to deliberately brush against the side of his bionic arm on her way- in order not to startle him with any skin-on-skin contact, and to silently tell him that _**I’m here for you, anything you need.**_

Through that one simple action, she felt the tremors making their way through his body, felt how close he is to losing himself, just how afraid he was of it, and how much effort it was taking him to keep himself together. Just long enough until he could be surrounded by her warmth and feel her hands run through his hair. That’s what it usually took to keep him tethered to the points of contact between them so that he can prevent himself from falling into the terrifying oblivion he thought he would never be able to come back from. Just long enough until she could come and hold him together while he falls apart.

He looked up with glazed over eyes, showing a mind that is barely hanging onto the thread keeping him present in this reality. His lips trembled when he made the effort to get his throat working and croaked out, “ **I’m so fucking sorry, Y/N. I don’t mean or want to be your basket case. I-** ”

The grim look on Y/N’s face, the stern glint in her eyes and the firm, “ **No** ,” she gave him told him that she wasn’t going to take any of what he was saying.

_But you see me at your feet and carry me inside_

She dropped the grocery bags on the kitchen counter at record speed and rushed back out on the porch to put a grounding hand on his leather-covered metal hand so as to usher him inside to the warmth of her modest house. She didn’t bother peeling her coat or his jacket off of either of them, she knew that every second she wasted was a second closer to some very-hard-to-repair mental damage.

_Can’t you see I’m wrapped in cellophane_

_Watch the blood pump through my veins_

_Electricity floods my brain_

_Can’t hide the pain, can’t hide the pain_

_When you’re wrapped in cellophane_

She heard the first choked sound just as she maneuvered Bucky’s head into her lap while she sat cross-legged above him. The suddenness of the sound made Y/N feel her own heart fracturing.

_**A head massage isn’t gonna do it.** _

She swiftly hooked her arms under his and somehow lifted him enough so that his back was to her chest. She wraped her arms across his torso and pulled him to her as tight as she could. Her hands framed his face softly from behind, feeling more than seeing and tracing his features from memory.

The tape that had been wrapping Bucky together so far was falling apart quicker than he thought it should, resulting in him being in his current state. All he saw when he looked at his own hands side by side were the veins pumping blood in his flesh hand and the phantom veins that _**should exist ~~why aren’t they there~~**_ on his bionic one. All he remembered when he closed his eyes was the feeling of the mouthguard filling his mouth and the phantom ache in his teeth from biting into it so hard, hearing the buzz of the electricity from The Chair and the sickening dread that pours from his stomach throughout his whole being whenever he was forced to sit in it. If he stayed still long enough, he could still remember the feeling of the electricity flooding his head and jumbling it so bad that his brain has no choice but to turn into unusable mush.

When cellophane is the only thing holding you together, no matter how hard you try to hide it, your pain and brokenness doesn’t disappear. Nothing can hide it. Even if you think you’ve gotten good enough in pretending otherwise, there’s always some people who always know what you’re going through.

_Look at me, I’m such a basket case_

_While I fall apart, you’ll hide all my pills again_

_And all the things I need to hear you say_

_You’ll watch as all my thoughts get right back on the train_

Bucky had lost control of his limbs, or maybe he was too inside his own head to know what his body was doing to itself. Because his flesh hand started scratching over his layers of clothes covering his left shoulder, while his left hand pressed so hard into his right hip it looks like it fu _cking hurt_. But he didn’t stop.There was a hysterical and terrified look on his face when Y/N climbed off of the couch they were sat on to take his face firmly into her hands to try and tether him back to the ground through her own touch.

She was almost shaken off by Bucky’s vigorous quivering and she distantly registered that there were tears streaming down her own face too but she didn’t care because _this innocent man sitting right in front of her is breaking and he doest deserve all this pain_. And yet, all she could do was pull his face into the crook of her neck and place firm close-lipped kisses on his head while he sobbed and trembled and she just felt so _weak_ and _useless goddamnit._

“ **It’s all over, Buck. They’re never getting to you again, I promise. I’ll move the forces of heaven and earth and go to hell before I let any of them even get the chance to lay a hand on you. You’re right here with me and I’m never letting you go. None of what you’re remembering and thinking of right now is ever going to repeat. Please come back to me Bucky, please. I need you to be here with me, can you do that? Can you look at me and give me a nod if all of you is here?** ”

After another few minutes of trying to coax him back to her, he managed to look back at her with drained, defeated eyes- _present_ eyes nonetheless. Bucky nodded at her, letting her know that a part of him heard her request and he wasn’t actively falling apart anymore.

She sighed out a deep sigh of relief, brought her forehead to rest on his. Y/N closed her eyes and began rambling out of pure relief, “ **You’re okay, always gonna be when you’re with me. You don’t deserve any of the pain you go through, I wish I could take it all away from you. You deserve a better life and the universe is just fucking cruel for putting you through what it has.** ”

Somewhere throughout her ramble, she felt his hands on her cheeks, wiping her own actively streaming tears. Y/N cut her rant off and opened her eyes, looking directly his own sad ones. “ **I’m so sorry this world broke you this much. You deserve so much better and I don’t know how to give it to you. Please tell me what I can do for you to right at least a fraction of what shitty fate has done to you. Just- just tell me what I can do for you Bucky,** ” she sagged into him from her position on the floor in front of where he sat on the couch.

Bucky just kept caressing her cheeks with his thumbs, neither of them knowing if their tears have stopped or not. He closed his eyes, slowly and innocently leaning forward.

Two pairs of lips touch, not out of want or need, but out of a much deeper drive that neither of them could deny. Maybe it’s the universe trying to fix the mistakes it had made with Bucky, bringing him the first good thing when he needed her most, properly sealing the bond that is currently searing ineradicable marks of each other on their hearts.

_Can’t you see I’m wrapped in cellophane_

_Watch the blood pump through my veins_

_Electricity floods my brain_

_Can’t hide the pain, can’t hide the pain_

_When you’re wrapped in cellophane_


End file.
